New poll of Pennsylvania voters shows Obama with 3-point lead

Mitt Romney's Pennsylvania operation is shifting five of its 64 state staffers to Ohio to help with early voting there, but the campaign said it is not an indication of their pulling out of the state.

"We are not out of Pennsylvania, no intention of going out," Bob Asher, national GOP committeeman and close confidante of the Romney campaign told The Morning Call. "We're redistributing where we think we need (staff) on a daily, weekly basis in these early voting states to get the votes to win ... We still have the whole structure here. It's business as usual."

Pennsylvania is one place where almost all of the voting actually occurs on Election Day, whereas other competitive states allow people to cast ballots weeks in advance.

As we've reported on this blog no less than a zillion times, Pennsylvania has shed its battleground sheen this cycle. However, things may spice up in the final weeks.

New York-based Siena College released a post-debate poll of Pennsylvania likely voters Tuesday morning that showed the race much tighter than any other independent, university-based survey. It has Barack Obama with 43 percent support to Romney's 40 percent and 12 percent still undecided. (Full results here)

The undecided number is higher than its been in most polls and may be an indication of Obama-leaning voters now on the fence after Romney's strong debate performance last week.

"I think we hit at a particularly interesting moment," Don Levy, Siena's pollster said. "What has occurred is not so much that Romney has new voters but you had some erosion of Obama support to undecided."

While there are no previous Siena polls to compare to, there is some evidence that their results may have hit on a Romney bump in Pennsylvania. Their Obama-Romney head-to-head is much tighter than other pre-debate polls, but the match up between U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and his GOP challenger Tom Smith shows a 9-point margin, which is almost identical to what other independent polls of that race has shown in recent weeks.